'I've got a very good story to tell': Tony Abbott confident of placating island leaders on climate change

Tony Abbott has entered a retreat with leaders from Pacific island nations confident he can reassure those who say their survival is threatened without a stronger commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

"I think I have got a very good story to tell on climate change to tell the Pacific Islands Forum," the Prime Minister said before entering a day-long meeting with 15 Pacific island leaders.

"We expect them as bigger brothers, not bad brothers, to support us on this one because our future depends on it," Mr Tong said earlier this week of Australia and New Zealand.

Rising sea levels are a significant threat to Kiribati.Credit:Justin McManus

Mr Tong raised the prospect of smaller states leaving the forum or Australia and New Zealand being asked to do so, though Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill played down this prospect.

Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama boycotted the forum, citing "the refusal of Australia and New Zealand to step back and allow the Pacific island nations to determine their own futures free from outside interference".

"We have significant differences with Australia over its policies on climate change, in particular, that are clearly not in the interests of the Pacific Small Island Developing States," he said in a letter to Mr O'Neill.

Both Mr Abbott and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key will resist the push led by the smaller island states to go beyond a commitment to the goal of limiting the global rise to 2 degrees.

Meanwhile, Mr Abbott claimed progress on another front, with Mr O'Neill agreeing to consider "some possible mechanisms" for Australian police in PNG to have an operational role.

"The important thing, I think, is to embed Australian police in the PNG police," Mr Abbott said.

"At the moment our police are advisers rather than participants in policing here in PNG and what we need to come up with is an arrangement which makes them participants, not mere bystanders to actual operational policing in PNG."